Upgrade from 5.5 R2 to 6.0

It took us quite a time, but the first version of upgrade from 5.5 R2 to 6.0 is finally ready.

Hi there,

I am happy to announce that we finally have the first version of the upgrade tool from Kentico CMS 5.5 R2 to Kentico CMS 6.

Version 6 was the biggest release ever, in fact in the amount of development time, it exceeded all the previous versions starting with 3.0, as you can see in this figure:

The numbers state for the amount of pure development time spent on the version, no consulting, meetings, designing or involvement of the developers in helping with support tickets is included, so it really is HUGE!

In the beginning I said the first upgrade. Given the amount of changes, we found a lot of complications when preparing the upgrade, that is why it took us much more time than we previously expected. I am really sorry that you had to wait so long for it.

There are still some small things that we need to figure out, so there will be a re-release of this upgrade available the next week that will handle those automatically. With this one, you need to make some of the changes manually (but still, most of it will be done automatically through our new tools, it is mostly about just setting the configuration through the admin UI, here is the list of the known issues that you need to handle if you apply the upgrade now:

Issue 1: All E-commerce UI elements are assigned to all roles, even if the respective roles did not have the elements assigned before upgrade.

To fix this issue, please go to Site Manager -> Administration -> UI personalization, select the respective site and role using the first two drop-down lists, select E-commerce in the third drop-down list and assign the UI elements to the role. Repeat this for all roles where needed.

Issue 2: Project management UI elements in the ribbon in CMS Desk -> Tools are visible even to roles that do not have these UI elements assigned. However, the actual user interface below the ribbon is not displayed.

To fix this issue, please go to Site Manager -> Administration -> UI personalization, select the respective site and role using the first two drop-down lists, select Tools in the third drop-down list and un-assign the respective UI elements under the Collaboration -> Projects node from the role. Repeat this for all roles where needed.

Issue 3: UI elements in the ribbon in CMS Desk -> On-line marketing are visible even to roles that do not have these UI elements assigned. However, the actual user interface below the ribbon is not displayed.

To fix this issue, please go to Site Manager -> Administration -> UI personalization, select the respective site and role using the first two drop-down lists, select On-line marketing in the third drop-down list and un-assign the respective UI elements from the role. Then select CMS Desk in the third drop-down list and un-assign the On-line marketing element from the role. Repeat this for all roles where needed.

Issue 4: Role that had the Project management UI elements assigned in 5.5 R2 do not have these UI elements assigned after upgrade.

To fix this issue, please go to Site Manager -> Administration -> UI personalization, select the respective site and role using the first two drop-down lists, select Tools in the third drop-down list and assign the respective UI elements under the Collaboration -> Projects node to the role. Repeat this for all roles where needed.

That is all, we don't know about anything else that would not work with the upgrade and everything that we tried as input data so far was upgraded properly ...

As you can see, all the issues are not so problematic (it is all about the new UI element permissions), so you can upgrade already, but I still recommend to just try it, let us know if anything else isn't upgraded correctly so we can fix it to re-release, and then wait for it. If you are really in the hurry with some projects, then just apply the upgrade and fix those items manually.

The upgrade can be applied through the Kentico Installation Manager or downloaded as standalone from here:

Hi, I am the CTO of Kentico and I will be constantly providing you the information about current development process and other interesting technical things you might want to know about Kentico.

Comments

Hassan
commented on Nov 1, 2011

Hi,

I faced a few exceptions while running the SQL script for the database upgrade. I thought it was because of our customizations but it seems like this would appear even in the case of a clean 5.5 R2 installation. I am making available the SQL Server messages for your review. I do understand that for customized solutions, there needs to be a lot more effort put in to upgrade than just running an executable patch.

http://pastebin.com/SXUx4hrK

Thanks in advance.Cheers.

Jason
commented on Oct 31, 2011

George....Are you Serious? The amount of work that Kentico have put into version 6 is amazing?Please put your self into the Shoes of the people making this?Guys like me bitching on forum "Where is my Upgrade?", then in the same breath asking for help etc.

Yeah so one or two issues that are easily fixable, and they actually tell you about them.

Have you ever tried to make something that can be rolled out to many people with many different setups and configs? It can be disastrous at best.

The minor problems above show how well the CMS is crafted in first place, the flexibility Kentico offers is truly something to behold and IMHO a developers dream.

The CMS I used before... How about writing about 300 lines of code and boiler plating another 100+ lines just to add a custom doc? Updates that broke things and never really fixed anything, and the CMS cost way more than Kentico.

**I DONT WORK FOR KENTICO**

Martin Hejtmanek
commented on Oct 28, 2011

Hi Dimitris,

Thank you, we will certainly look at that.

Martin Hejtmanek
commented on Oct 28, 2011

Hi George,

This depends on your definition of "Enterprise", this word, similar to Customer Experience Management and other similar terms that are really more marketing jargon, does not really have a clear definition and if you ask several people, they give you several different answers.

This is a definition from Wikipedia that I believe we cover quite well: "Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM covers the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise whether that information is in the form of a paper document, an electronic file, a database print stream, or even an email."

Let me explain you my simpler definition of "Enterprise" so we can talk about something specific, if yours is different, I am happy to hear it if you can share it with us.

My rather simple definition of enterprise would be: "A combination of great product and great services suitable for almost any project you can think of, even very large companies or projects delivered with a high quality, offering wide range of features needed for such projects."

I believe we cover that all, we have a great product that can cover the features in most aspects even better than the "standard" in this industry, we also have great services and probably one of the best supports out there (based on the feedback from our clients), we have methodologies and consulting services to allow for delivering such complex projects seamlessly. If you think otherwise, let me know what you think we don't cover for which we shouldn't call our product "Enterprise".

You actually made a great point, you said: "this is not standard behavior from a company that offers "Enterprise" solution" which is absolutely true, but it isn't really something that would be beneficial for the clients. In fact, this is what I hate about so called "Enterprise market", the standard that is out there is that everybody tries to hide most things from you to pretend that everything is OK, but in reality, it isn't. They (not all of them, but some) actually deliver it in a similar state as we do now, but not telling you about it (just ask some clients that are using it). We do not want to be just standard, we want to offer something extra, which is providing great product and services, but also be completely transparent about what we do and what is the state. One reason is to be better than the competition, and the other is that we are providing what we do across all segments of market, for the lower market, the time to delivery is more important, for the higher one the quality is the main aspect.

In the end, we deliver everything you expect from an enterprise solution (which will be next week), if you don't need it or can handle those known issues by yourselves, you have the CHOICE to do it now.

We believe that everybody is eligible to make that choice based on their need, and we do not want everybody else to wait just because only some of the clients need to wait for the enterprise quality. This I think answers your first question.

At this point, if you are enterprise client, you can pretend that the upgrade was not yet released and wait until it will be released in a state that you expect.

The upgrade is something that is "From developers to developers", we could call it "Beta" as well as the final "Enterprise", but to developers, this is not about the wording, but about the possibility to upgrade. Also, on the market there is a lot of products have very problematic way to even upgrade to higher versions, but are still perceived as Enterprise without anyone even arguing about that these are the ones that I don't consider a real enterprise solutions.

I am happy to hear more details from you on what do you think about this, and also some specific items (whether it is features or services related) that you think we don't cover and justifies us not being eligible to be in the enterprise market.

Rocco Mazzeo
commented on Oct 28, 2011

Great job!! Update completed ... in a dev environment :) ready for test!

Dimitris Rakopoulos
commented on Oct 27, 2011

Good job indeed! The packaged worked like a charm. The only thing that I noticed is that after I applied the package the site on the Installation Manager still says 5.5R2. I had to remove it and register it again to see version 6.0.

Good jobs, guys!

George B.
commented on Oct 27, 2011

Hi Kentico!

Why did you release a tool that is INCOMPLETE? Sorry, but this is not standard behavior from a company that offers "Enterprise" solution.

It looks like, you have just solution that is called "Enterprise", but without rich Enterprise features and right Enterprise approach to your customers.

To offer Enterprise solution is not only about the name of the product, but also whole company has to be ready for the Enterprise. Maybe it is still long and painful way for Kentico....